Mums

A couple months ago around Mother’s Day, I was frantically searching for the best bunch of flowers I could get for my mom. Pressed for time, I grabbed the first potted flowers I saw that I thought my mom would love and dashed out of the store, returning home. When my mom saw the flowers I got her, which were apparently mums, she was overjoyed and immediately started talking about planting them outside in the front yard. I was puzzled by this because I never considered these flowers able to bloom again next year. Ignorantly, I pursued no further questions and just left the situation where it was. About two weeks after my mom planted the mums, they proved my theory and died.

This now brings me back to the present. I noticed that around the end of October, there were a bunch of mums in full bloom potted outside the Chemistry building. At first I didn’t even know what kind of flowers they were, but after a few double takes I realized that they definitely resembled the ones I bought for my mom. I was confused as to why these flowers were in bloom at such a cold time of year and tried guessing as to what special type of flowers they might have actually been. Shortly after, my mom called me and joyfully told me how great the mums looked. By now I was utterly dumbfounded as to why the mums were suddenly in bloom. Of course, I failed to realize that perhaps these flowers didn’t bloom just once a year, but twice. Although I felt so naïve on the phone, I at least learned something about flowers that might prove to be useful in the future.